mira wegman 1.1a
“Form matters, but not so much the forms of things as the forms between things.” (92) This concept makes me think of figure-group concepts, as well as in-between spaces. I have learned when creating a space, that powerful designs are ones that serve multiple purposes. For example, a wall is a necessary part of a structure, to define the space and create a barrier between the inside and outside or between various rooms. However, a thick wall with a built-in bench or carved out shelves serve, both the purpose of the wall, as well as an intimate in-between space. Last term, we created figure-group drawings of black and white shapes, and the successful ones were the ones where neither the black nor the white were dominant, but where you couldn’t tell which were the objects and which were the backgrounds. The ground serves just an important role as the figure in architecture and you cannot neglect either when designing a space.
“Field conditions are bottom-up phenomena, defined not by overarching geometrical schemas but by intricate local connections.”(92) This concept reminds me that, even if you create a design with all the necessary features, it will not be successful if you don’t consider the path the user will take through the space and the relationships between the spaces. For example, if you are designing a house, need a kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms, a dining room, etc. But it would not make sense to put the kitchen on one of the house and the dining room at the opposite end, because the two spaces serve related purposes. You wouldn’t put a bedroom where the foyer should be because bedrooms should be an intimate, private space, not an entrance into the rest of the house.
“A moire is a figural effect produced by the superposition of two regular fields….. The monuments of the past, including the skyscraper, a modernist monument to efficient production, stood out from the fabric of the city as privileged vertical moments.” (98) This portion of the article made me think of what we learned last term and the term before about building height agreements. Old European cities decided on a specific height that the buildings could not surpass. This gave unity and a sense of equality to the cities, making no building more important than any other. The exceptions to these rules were, of course, the significant buildings such as churches and city halls. This is a practice that can still be seen around the world. While New York City is filled with skyscrapers, the tallest one is the Empire State building which now serves as a sort of monument. Aside from this, there is also the statue of liberty. It stands alone on an island to welcome people immigrating to the United States and serves as a symbol of everything our country stands for.
“In the late 1980s, artificial intelligence theorist Craig Reynolds created a computer program to simulate the flocking behavior of birds…. The flock is clearly a field phenomenon, defined by precise and simple local conditions, and relatively indifferent to overall form and extent.” (99) This section simply made me think of how people and other things act in certain spaces. These birds acted the specific way they did because of the environment they were put in and the things that surrounded them. This is an important thing to consider when designing the layout of a building our even thinking of where to put furniture in a room. People have to move around their surroundings, therefore the layout of spaces should be deliberate and guide them to important parts of the space.
“Instead, by forming the institution within a directed field condition, connected to the city or landscape, a space is left for the tactical improvisations of future users… the field condition implies an architecture that admits change, accident, and improvisation.” (102) This made me think of our lecture during the fall term. We learned that, while a client that you are designing for ay have a very specific use for the building that you have to accommodate, if you make the building too specific, it can only serve that function. For example, if you are asked to design a library, it will need desks and tables and lots of shelves for books. However, if one day, they want to sell this building to someone who wants to turn it into a gym, if you made the features of the library too permanent or specific, it will be a very difficult space to convert. There is a happy medium between general and specific.
